In Memoriam: Adib Jarrar

Adib Jarrar was an unforgettable individual: Unforgettably smart, unforgettably honest, unforgettably empathetic and unforgettably generous. As such, an ‘in memoriam’ section in a professional journal is unlikely to have any personal ‘plus value’ for those of us who -as friends - are hurting with his tragic passing.

Instead, I would like to use this platform to try and articulate what I fear we sorely do need a reminder of, namely the values, beliefs and attitudes that Adib professed, preached and practiced vis-à-vis the psychodynamics of international conflicts in general, and that of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular. Adib was hardly unique among Palestinians to have family ties throughout the region: A proud ‘Akkawi’ (native of Acre), he nurtured close relationships with his relatives and friends in Jenin Refugee Camp, Ramallah in the West Bank, Amman in Jordan - and many other enclaves of Palestinian life. What makes Adib unique, both in private and as a public activist/healer was his ability to deeply identify with each of the (vastly different) Palestinian groups, without allowing any one of his identities to take over the others. This gave him a unique (and sometimes annoyingly sagacious) ability to contain multiple aspects of any conflict at once: conflicts among Israelis, among Palestinians, and between Israelis and Palestinians. Remarkably, he did so without losing sight of the humanity of the people involved or of the ultimate goal: Maximizing justice and social dignity. In this era, where the brains of too many of us are routinely hijacked by vacuous partisanship and cynical identity-based political manipulations, Adib is a role model of conscientious resistance, whereby the unwavering quest for social justice peers beyond the ethnicity of the perpetrator, rendering him impervious to political ‘spins’ and propaganda.

One may wonder why Adib, being such a talented and important figure in the psychodynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (a